1. Field
The present invention relates to a wall-mounted microwave oven, and, more particularly, to a wall-mounted microwave oven including a hood mover having a forwardly-movable hood plate.
2. Description of the Related Art
A wall-mounted microwave oven is a cooking appliance installed over another cooking appliance such as a gas range or a cooktop installed on a counter in a kitchen, to perform a hood function for discharging, to the outdoors, exhaust gas, fumes, or food smells emitted during a cooking operation of the another cooking appliance, in addition to a cooking function using microwaves, as in general microwave ovens.
In such a wall-mounted microwave oven, microwaves emitted from a magnetron are irradiated to food to repeatedly change the arrangement of water molecules in the food, thereby causing the food to be cooked by inter-frictional heat of the water molecules. An inlet is provided at the bottom of the wall-mounted microwave oven, to suck exhaust gas, etc. An exhaust passage, in which an exhaust fan is arranged, is defined in the interior of the wall-mounted microwave oven, to discharge exhaust gas and food smells generated during a cooking operation of another cooking appliance arranged beneath the wall-mounted microwave oven, to the outdoors, through an outlet.
Generally, the cooking appliance arranged beneath the wall-mounted microwave oven has a forward width larger than that of the wall-mounted microwave oven. For this reason, it is difficult for the wall-mounted microwave oven to completely suck all of the exhaust gas, fumes, and food smell generated at the front portion of the cooking appliance.
In order to solve this problem and to enhance the hood function, a hood mover is installed at the bottom of the wall-mounted microwave oven such that the hood mover is forwardly movable. The hood mover is mounted to the wall-mounted microwave oven, in order to enable a hood plate to be manually movable with respect to a body of the wall-mounted microwave oven, or to be automatically movable with respect to the body, using a driving motor and operating gears, and thus to enable the hood plate to guide exhaust gas, etc. emitted at a front portion of another cooking appliance arranged beneath the wall-mounted microwave oven to be guided to an inlet arranged at the bottom of the wall-mounted microwave oven.
An example of a conventional wall-mounted microwave oven, in which a moving hood is coupled to a fixed hood such that the moving hood is manually movable in forward and backward directions, is disclosed in Korean Unexamined Patent Publication No. 10-2005-31781. The disclosed wall-mounted microwave oven includes a fixed hood arranged at the bottom of a body of the wall-mounted microwave oven such that the fixed hood communicates with an exhaust passage, a moving hood mounted to the fixed hood such that the moving hood is slidable, an exhauster for the fixed hood arranged in the exhaust passage, to discharge air introduced into the fixed hood to the outside of the body, and an exhauster for the moving hood arranged in the exhaust passage near the exhauster for the fixed hood, to discharge air introduced into the moving hood to the outside of the body.
As another conventional technique, an example of a conventional wall-mounted microwave oven, in which a moving hood is coupled to a fixed hood such that the moving hood is automatically movable, using a driving motor and operating gears, is disclosed in Korean Unexamined Patent Publication No. 10-2005-31780. The disclosed microwave oven includes an operating unit functioning to forwardly and backwardly move the moving hood along the fixed hood. The operating unit includes a drive motor and a pinion gear, which are fixed to the fixed hood, a rack gear engaged with the pinion gear, a support member fixed to the moving hood, together with the rack gear, a fixed rail fixedly mounted to the fixed hood, and a moving rail fixed to the moving hood beneath the support member, and fitted in the fixed rail.
However, the wall-mounted microwave oven disclosed in each of the above publications has difficulty in cleaning oil and dirt attached to the moving hood due to fumes, exhaust gas, and oil evaporated during a cooking operation because it is impossible to separate the moving hood from the fixed hood.
Furthermore, it is impossible to prevent oil and dirt, etc. from being attached to the lower case of the wall-mounted microwave oven because the moving hood is arranged within the body of the wall-mounted microwave oven.
In the above-mentioned automatic hood mover, the operating unit to automatically move the moving hood has a complex structure incurring an increase in manufacturing costs because the operating unit includes the drive motor and pinion gear, which are fixed to the fixed hood, the rack gear engaged with the pinion gear, etc.